


King's Gambit Accepted

by SummerJay



Series: 2021 AFTG Prompt Fic Collection [1]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Ambiguity, Gen, Riko might still die, book three never happened, sweetly fucked up family dynamics, will he though?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:22:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28669923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SummerJay/pseuds/SummerJay
Summary: Accidentally bearing witness to one of the new Lord's affairs launches Riko onto a cat-and-mouse race he's not sure he wants to win.
Relationships: Ichirou Moriyama & Riko Moriyama
Series: 2021 AFTG Prompt Fic Collection [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2101185
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	King's Gambit Accepted

**Author's Note:**

> This is a part of a—hopefully—longer series of short fics in the AFTG fandom. Most of them are prompt inspired, most of them will have wild pairings and relationships. Also, mafia.  
> For this particular fic, the prompt is: Kengo dies but book 3 doesn't happen, Christamas-themed, tie, cinnamon.

_Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.  
_ _— Benjamin Franklin_

Riko returns home on the day his father dies. He expects to survive the reunion only for mere seconds.

He’s standing in the doorway of Evermore’s conference room when Ichirou’s gun must still be scolding hot from blowing the brains of Harry Jenkins, the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, and as quiet moments drag by, Riko realizes he doesn’t know anything about his life anymore.

Ichirou looks passive to many, incapable of swift actions—Riko knows for certain it’s by choice. He doesn’t dare speak a word.

Ichirou is motionless and cold like a stone, a small rock that becomes large all of a sudden as it travels from the ocean shore, through the mud, through the air, right into your temple. Riko doesn’t look at him. He’s seeing his brother for the first time ever exactly where he resides—in the corpse on the floor and the blood staining Tetsuji’s raven black certificate frames on the opposite wall.

It can be a lifetime of decisions before the smooth voice cuts through the silence.

“Come.”

Riko bends to the call without thinking. He shuts the door with a soft click and crosses to his brother, carefully circling the spilled blood.

There were not many times in life his family acknowledged his presence, much less ordered it, and Riko takes what he can get. It will be over soon anyway.

“Were you looking for Tetsuji?” Ichirou asks, returning the gun to his shoulder holster and picking up the glass from the desk. He doesn’t take a sip.

He waits patiently for Riko to find his voice.

“Yes. He wanted to-”

“That is not what I asked.”

Riko falls dead silent. It’s instinctive, even though Ichirou doesn’t raise his voice. He raises his eyes instead, and Riko feels the attention prickle at his skin like sharp cold snow dancing outside the window.

“Are you in trouble?”

Riko wonders, could he meet his brother’s eyes before death.

“I didn’t do well,” he responds quietly.

Ichirou leans onto the desk. His eyes travel, with a blink, to the most prominent element of the room’s décor, and Riko lets his trace the way Ichirou slowly swirls a finger across the rim of the glass.

Finally, calmly, Ichirou speaks.

“That remains to be seen.”

Riko manages to stop shaking on the third Raven day.

. . .

Riko doesn’t go to his father’s funeral. It’s a thought in the back of his mind—it is today the man he’d spent twenty-one years trying so hard to impress is descending into the ground, right now. Except, this time, there is no more hope for the ice to break. Kengo Moriyama will forever stay as cold.

Riko harshly returns the focus to the racquet in his hands.

If the day felt hollow, a simple text waiting for him when he steps off the court shatters the locker room with a hailstorm.

Ichirou says: “come to my place at nine.”

Riko wonders if he should dress for a different funeral.

In the end, it doesn’t matter much. Ichirou unbuttons his plain black Mandarin to the waist and peels the fabric off the bruises staining Riko’s collarbones.

“Did you fail today?” he asks in the same measured tone that locks Riko’s world in place.

Riko would never lie. He can’t even remember what Tetsuji’s retribution for the invitation his Master never received felt like, not under Ichirou’s touch.

“No,” Riko answers.

After a moment, Ichirou lets go of him and gestures to the cup of tea on the table. It’s lonely there, right on the edge of the shiny polished wood, a piece of traditional Japanese ceramic dishware with a deep-blue chaotic pattern.

“He will not do it again,” Ichirou informs him.

By the power of reflexes engraved by training and a speck of sudden recklessness, Riko manages to draw a breath. They spend the evening talking. Riko doesn’t touch the cup.

. . .

It occurs to Riko somewhere between the golden fairy lights peppering the snow-covered branches of a tree and, later, the knife beside the cup on Ichirou’s table, he’s not the only one capable of torture.

“More Ravens making Court in sacrifice of the system would simply shift the percentile and drop in quality. We hold the highest share of scored advantage in each game, compared to each new addition who is not a Raven-”

“You don’t like Exy, do you?” Ichirou cuts him off.

Finally, there is no hesitation in Riko’s voice. It’s the first thing for a long time he can state with concrete certainty.

“Exy is my life, Lord.”

Ichirou ponders on that for a moment.

“What is your major?”

The ease Ichirou shifts between topics never breaks the threshold of interrogation; Riko sees the same seeking patterns he’s polishing in his conversations, more graceful but unmistakably, dangerously deliberate, and answers nonetheless.

“Psychology. It will be useful for the Court.”

Ichirou nods a little. “Tell me more.”

. . .

They break the mark of nine dinners when Riko’s resolve to stay alive breaks along. He rests his fingers on the rim of the mug—simple and American this time, enwrapping him in the spicy smell of winter and hot wine.

“Why do you keep doing this?” he speaks first, quietly.

Ichirou lifts an eyebrow.

“I want to know you.”

“You know everything about me.”

“Do you believe knowing someone means cataloging facts about them?”

It feels too real to discard—everything with Ichirou does. He sits completely still, albeit relaxed, when he truly listens, eyes intense with genuine curiosity. It’s a perfect trap. Riko has never been the one to run; now he simply knows, deep inside, it’s been too late since the body on Tetsuji’s floor made him an unplanned witness.

“I believe facts are lies,” Riko says, “until you know why you’re asking.”

Ichirou’s half-smile reflects the soft light of the room, encouraging. Riko continues:

“You have a box of puzzle pieces that can align a hundred different ways. How do you know which one is correct?”

“You look at the picture,” Ichirou says.

Riko gives a small nod. “You need to have one. And it must be yours—it’s the only one you can truly see. Otherwise, you tell yourself you’ve found the true nature of someone while you really just sew together a bunch of misconceptions.”

“Always having an angle gets boring,” Ichirou immediately replies. “Have you never felt curious about what you can uncover if you allow the person to take the lead?”

Riko looks at the slow dance of cinnamon and carnation in the mug, triggered by the momentary restlessness in his fingers. He’d like his heart to race just a little slower. Just to let him think. Just to let him choose that soothing careful agreement that’s been rolling off his tongue so naturally, but he finds his brother’s eyes and manages to swallow around the heady feeling of being _alive._

“Toying with food is impractical,” he says simply.

The slight quirk in Ichirou’s lips makes him take his hand off the mug.

. . .

Three days before Christmas, Riko receives an invitation to a charity dinner Moriyama Trading Company is throwing as per its annual tradition. He comes to his brother’s apartment in a full suit—Ichirou wants them to arrive in tandem—except for the tie, and expects nothing.

There hasn’t been a bruise on him that he did not deserve, for longer than Riko can justify. Riko assumes caution is a little overdue.

Ichirou doesn’t hurry, he’s gathering himself methodically and calmly, and he refrains from talking until his reflection in the mirror reaches perfection.

“Come here.”

When Riko approaches, Ichirou laces a slim black tie with a tasteful pattern in silver around his neck and lets it slide into position before tying the knot.

Riko smothers a shiver. He can’t do anything about the way his breath hitches from the cold, cold droplet falling off his hair and rolling down along the back of his neck, beneath the suit, beneath his skin.

A measured tug. The knot inches closer to his chin. Riko swallows.

It’s so purposefully slow he’d call it out—consequences could, perhaps, still matter a month ago—if he didn’t feel so inescapably bound in his bones.

Tighter.

Perfectly straight.

Riko cannot breathe normally anymore; it’s a mercy—he’d laugh if he could. His attire couldn’t be more suitable for a burial.

Ichirou stops in contemplation, and his single step back doesn’t feel like distance at all—the weight around Riko’s throat lets him stay exactly where he wants to be.

“Kneel,” Ichirou commands quietly, and Riko falters, for another of a damning string of first times.

Dying doesn’t compare to the danger of _this._

When he obeys, Ichirou circles him and rests behind; he pulls at Riko’s collar, making him take in the view in the mirror.

“Look. Tell me what you see.”

Believing it at any other time would mean destruction—Riko’s been working hard on carving that particular hope out of himself, in blood and bone of others more often than not. Now his brother’s hand ghosts over his nape. The floor bites sharply into his knees, and Riko straightens his back in the instinctive portrayal of respect.

He feels the tie squeeze and hold him together like a stadium lighting red.

Ichirou waits until their eyes meet and repeats, switching to Japanese, any hint of softness gone from his voice:  
  
“What do you see, Riko?”

Riko tips his chin up.

“Family.”

. . .

Being in the company of the very people he was never supposed to meet could feel surreal, but Riko holds himself with an easy understanding of such occasions. It’s not much different from meeting the press. It leaves his mind free to wander and examine, and he tracks Ichirou’s fluent movement through the crowd in the corner of his eye.

When a particular conversation lasts longer than a few seconds, Riko leans on the bar and observes more openly.

Ichirou hands over one of the two glasses he’s been holding and smiles warmly when the man takes an appreciative sip.

Riko doesn’t smile when his brother returns to his side and offers him the other drink, visibly identical.

“Do you play chess?” Ichirou asks, looking into the crowd.

Riko takes the glass. It’s clear whiskey with spice blending in subtly and a single cinnamon roll, half-immersed, reclined on the side.

“I know some theory,” Riko says. “Common openings and general tactics.”

“Good. Then you are aware there are two ways this can go.”

The tie feels like a promise. But Riko had learned, over the course of the strangest month in his life, that Ichirou takes no other proof short of a devoted action. He contemplates, without much interest, how long it will take for the man to cough around the sudden tightness in his throat—probably hours into the Christmas night, well after the dinner is over.

Riko accepts without fuss.

The whiskey burns on the way down.

**Author's Note:**

> In case you wondered, I'm laying claim to christening the ship as Richirou.
> 
> Come say hi on [tumblr](https://summer-jay.tumblr.com/).


End file.
